Kamen Rider Nocturnal: Battle of Ever After
by soultaker78
Summary: Raven enters her first major battle as a Kamen Rider as Foundation X comes to the land of Ever After and Raven enters into an unlikely alliance to stop them.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: this picks up right after an earlier story I did called 'Preludes'. If you read this one without reading that one first, you will be confused because 'Preludes' establishes a lot of things this story is built on. Also, I paid an artist on Deviant Art to draw a picture of Raven as Kamen Rider Nocturnal. Sorry I can't put it as a link.

inspector97 dot deviantart dot com /art/Raven-Queen-Kamen-Rider-560198266

...

It was in between classes at Ever After High. Raven was walking through a hallway when Finelope rode up alongside her on her wheelchair.

"Hello Raven," Finelope greeted.

"Hey Finelope," Raven greeted back.

"I need to talk to you about something important," Finelope continued. "But not here: during lunch outside the castleteria."

"Okay," Raven agreed, curious to see what this was all about.

...

At lunch that day, Raven went outside and found Finelope. Unfortunately, she was also there with Evan Chanter. Raven (like most people in the school who weren't also huge assholes) did not like Evan but she had already told Finelope that they'd talk so she walked over to them.

"What is this about?" Raven asked as she glared at Evan.

"I need your help," Evan said. "There is a group coming here that have very bad intentions for this world and I need to fight them. I can do that, but I need to tap into your immense magical power and combine it with my knowledge of how to actually use such power and for that, I need your cooperation."

"And why I should I cooperate with you?" Raven asked scornfully. Aside from her own dislike of Evan, she had a good reason not to help him. The method of tapping into someone else's magical power that Raven knew about was hextremely painful to whoever was being tapped.

"Because if you don't," Evan began, "a lot of people could get hurt because you didn't help me stop this crisis before it escalated."

"Since when do you care about other people?"

"I don't: but you do. And I can use that to make you do what I want."

Raven glared at Evan again, who was currently wearing a very smug grin.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a very punchable face?" Raven asked.

"Many times," Evan answered.

"Please Raven," Finelope spoke up, hoping to calm things down. "I don't know much of what's going on, but if these Foundation X guys are half as bad as Evan says they are..."

"Wait, Foundation X," Raven interrupted. "That's who's coming?"

"Yes," Evan answered. "How do you know of them?"

"I'll get to that in a bit," Raven said. "I will help you fight them, but no tapping into my magic. I'll fight them in my own way."

"And what way is that, you developmentally challenged sorceress?" Evan asked condescendingly.

"This way," Raven said as she summoned the Nocturnal Driver around her waist. She was going to transform into Kamen Rider Nocturnal, but was interrupted by Evan.

"Holy shitballs!," Evan exclaimed. "Since when the hex are you a Kamen Rider?"

"Since about a week," Raven answered.

"I'm confused: what's going on now?" Finelope asked.

"I've recently decided to emulate a group of warriors called Kamen Riders," Raven began. "Some of them have them have fought Foundation X, so that's how I know about that group." Raven faced Evan. "But why do we need to fight them ourselves? Can't we tell the authorities about this and they'll take it from there?"

"If I told them about an incoming extra-dimensional threat," Evan began.

"They wouldn't take you seriously," Raven finished. "And there would be the same problem if I tried to tell them." She knew that because they were both future villains, no one would listen to them.

"I could tell them," Finelope spoke up. "I'm a princess: they'll listen to me."

"And what will you tell them when they where you got your information from?" Evan asked.

"From you," Finelope asked. "Oh," she said as she drooped her head and realized that that option would have the same problem.

"Besides," Evan continued. "Even if they believed us, while they're responding to the threat with the glacial pace of government bureaucracy, Foundation X will use that time to gain a greater foothold in this universe."

 _And if we go to the authorities_ , Evan started thinking _, they'll want to punish me for how my stealing brought Foundation X here in the first place. They might even hand me over to Foundation X in an attempt to smooth things over._

"How do you know about Foundation X?" Raven asked.

"That's not important," Evan responded.

"He's been stealing from them," Finelope answered truthfully.

"What?" Raven exclaimed. "And you're asking me to help protect you from them?"

"Yes," Evan answered flatly. "But tell me this Raven: does that make me automatically wrong about how it's best for this world if we remove Foundation X from it as soon as possible, or how the authorities will must likely ignore any warning made from either us? While you are thinking about that, keep in mind that if Foundation X were to learn and copy stuff about magic from this world and take that knowledge back to their world to further their agenda, it would endanger people in that world."

"Damn it," Raven muttered under her breath. "How is it that you being a psycho and a sadist and manipulating me to help cover your ass doesn't make you wrong?"

"I have no idea," Evan admitted.

"Who else is a part of this?" Raven asked.

"So far, it's the three of us plus Faebelle," Finelope answered.

"Oh this just gets better and better," Raven said sarcastically as she put her hand on her forehead. Due to the bad blood between them, Raven was not looking forward to having to work with Faebelle on this. "Don't get me wrong: I'll still help. I'll just like it even less."

"Hexcellent," Evan said. "One last thing: do either of you know of anyone else we can bring in on this? They'd have to know how to fight and be able to keep a secret."

"I've got someone in mind," Raven said. "I'll bring Cerise Hood."

"Why her?" Evan asked.

"She's stronger than she looks," Raven answered.

 _And she really knows how to keep a secret_ , Raven mentally added.

"I'll bring someone too," Finelope said.

"Great," Evan said as he took out his mirror phone brought up a map with a specific location selected and showed it to Raven. "Come here along with whoever you have in mind after school. We need to start making preparations."

Raven looked at the map and selected the same spot on the map app on her phone. It was a clearing just inside the dark forest near the school.

The three of them parted ways after that.

...

Raven met up with Cerise later and told the hooded girl that she needed her help with something important. After classes that day, Raven lead Cerise over to the Asain part of Book End while explaining the current situation she had gotten into.

"Please wait out here," Raven said to Cerise outside Mr. Woo's butcher shop. She went into the shop, past Mr. Woo and into Meiling's dojo. Meiling wasn't there at the moment.

 _She and Finelope are probably already on their way to the rendezvous point_ , Raven thought.

Raven thought that it might be a good idea to tell Cerise and Meiling about each other since they had quite a bit in common with hiding who they really were. The problem with that was that each of them trusted Raven with their secrets and she didn't feel right betraying that trust, which she'd have to do tell them about each other. Raven decided that that was an issue for later since she had other things to worry about.

She began looking over some of Meiling's weapon racks, trying to find a weapon that would be a good match for Cerise. After about three minutes of searching, Raven found what she thought would be a good choice: a pair of knives. They had curved blades that were about three inches long and one inch thick. Raven did a few practice slashes with one and decided that the knives used with Cerise's speed would make for a deadly combination. She took the knives (along with their sheaths) and rejoined Cerise outside the shop.

"What was that about?" Cerise asked.

"It's a long story," Raven said as she handed Cerise the knives. "Short version: I know someone who works here and she's going to be okay with me borrowing these for you."

"She?" Cerise asked as she took the knives and attached the sheaths to her pants. "I don't know of any women who work here and I've been here a few times."

"You have?"

"This place has hexcellent braised spare rips. Try them and you'll understand how this place stays in business despite Woo calling all his customers cocksuckers."

"I had wondered about," Raven said as she put her hand on her chin.

Cerise took a knife out and swung it a bit, finding that it was not that heavy thanks to her half-werewolf strength. She was very curious as to how Raven was connected to this place or what this woman was or what these kind of knives were doing at a butcher shop but decided not to pursue the matter because she knew that people had reasons for not sharing everything.

"These will do nicely," Cerise said as she sheathed the knife.

With that taken care of, Raven summoned her demonic horse Demona out of an infernal portal in the ground that Demona jumped out of. Raven and Cerise got on Demona and rode towards the rendezvous point.

Some time later, they got to Evan's specified location. Finelope, Meiling and Faebelle were waiting for them there. Meiling had a pole weapon with a short, curved blade attached to her back (this was called a quado, but Raven didn't know that) and a sheath for her sword at her side. Raven and Cerise disembarked and Demona jumped down into a portal like the one she came from.

"Hi, I'm Finelope," the plus-sized mermaid said to Cerise after moving up to her. "That's Meiling. She's a friend of my roommate. It's nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Cerise returned the greeting, then turned her head and got a closer look at Meiling. "Those are the largest muscles I've ever seen on a girl before."

"I get that a lot," Meiling said and then flexed her arm to show off her physique.

"Hello Raven," Faebelle said to her in a drawn out way practically dripping with spite (1).

"Faebelle," Raven said back. "Will everyone's least favorite psychopath be joining us or does he think he's too good for that?"

"He's going to be here," Faebelle said. "He had to do something first and it's taking him a while getting back from it."

"Might as well work in some practice while I'm waiting," Cerise said as she unsheathed her knives and swinging them. Meiling noticed that the knives were the same ones from her dojo but didn't mind.

 _If I'm going to help with this, my stuff can too_ , she thought to herself.

"Good idea Cerise," Raven said as she summoned the Nocturnal Driver around her waist. "Henshin," she said as she channeled her magic into the belt and became Kamen Rider Nocturnal.

"That's cool," Cerise said with her eyes slightly wide in shock.

"Indeed," Faebelle agreed as she looked over Raven's armor. "I think I hate you slightly less now."

"Good to know," Raven said. She materialized the Night Axe and started practicing with it. Meiling drew her quado and joined them in weapons practice.

Roughly ten minutes later, Evan showed up in a wooden cart that was being pulled by Terry the tabby. There were two humanoid creatures with him that had black bodies with strips of what looked like white cloth over them and what looked like a black hole on the face.

"Hello ladies," Evan said as he got off the cart. "Sorry I'm late: Terry didn't move the cart as fast as I thought he would." He looked around and got a good look at Nocturnal. "So that's your armor. Do you have a rider name yet?"

"Yes: I'm Kamen Rider Nocturnal," she answered.

"Not bad," Evan said.

"Who did you do that to?" Nocturnal asked, pointing at Terry.

"A stray cat I found. Don't worry: he's not in there anymore," Evan answered as he went back to the cart and came out carrying Lil' Fatty with significant difficulty. "Lil' Fatty here did me a great service so I removed him once he'd given me a Yummy." He put Fatty down and went back to the cart. "Can you come over here, Finelope?"

"Sure," Finelope said as she moved to the cart, where she saw the spell rifle laying down inside. She grabbed the butt of the rifle, dragged it closer to her and held it. "I finally get to try this thing out," she said hexitedly.

"Another thing you stole from Foundation X?" Nocturnal asked.

"No," Evan answered. "My mother once experimented with the creation of magical firearms, based on mechanical ones used by people in other worlds. This is a prototype left over from that." Evan went back to his cart and pulled out a large, brown strap with many capsules of green energy on it. He walked up to Finelope. "These are what's used to power the weapon. You put them in here," he said, pointing to a slot on the top and then sliding a capsule inside. "They'll pop out when empty and then you put in a new one. Each capsule is only good for eight shots, so please aim first."

"Okay," Finelope said. Evan wrapped the strap around and attached the ends together so Finelope could wear it as a bandolier. He copped a quick feel during this but Finelope choose not to notice.

"Now I want to take a look at my new allies," Evan said as he faced Cerise and Meiling. "You I know," he said to Cerise, "but you I don't," he said to Meiling.

"I'm a friend of Finelope's roommate," Meiling said.

"Oh, you know Michigo," Evan said with a hint of unease. "What has she told you about me?"

"All bad things," Meiling answered.

"That sounds about right," Evan said, then took a closer look at Meiling. "You actually look like Michigo. Well, your face does: your physique is another story."

"All Asian people kind of look alike," Meiling said.

"Yes, that's true," Evan said.

 _Good thing he's racist enough to fall for that,_ Meiling thought.

"I just want to thank both of you in advance," Evan continued, "for helping with the most noble endevour imaginable."

"Protecting our universe from extra-dimensional evil?" Meiling asked, causing Evan to chuckle for a bit.

"No: saving my ass," he clarified. Both Cerise and Meiling glared at him angrily (as well as Raven but nobody saw that under her helmet).

"Why are we helping you again?" Cerise asked. "I mean, you're an asshole."

"And a sadist," Kamen Rider Nocturnal added.

"And a psychopath," Meiling piped in.

"And a sexual deviant," Faebelle said.

"For the last time, Faebelle," Finelope said angrily, "liking fat chicks does not make him a sexual deviant."

"In a very broad sense, it does," Evan admitted.

"What's going on here?" Cerise asked in confusion.

"Evan and Finelope are seeing each other," Faebelle explained.

"We have more important things to worry about," Evan said, not worrying about Faebelle revealing that particular secret. "To answer your original question, Cerise, you're helping me because as bad as I am, Foundation X is worse and it's best for everybody if they are quickly removed from this universe. Now let's go over what we have to work with."

…

Author's notes: (1) if you've ever watched 'Seinfeld', Faebelle said this in the same way Jerry would greet his nemesis Newman.


	2. Chapter 2

"I want to introduce all of you to some minions of mine," Evan said as he went back to the cart and lifted up two small, black objects with red buttons on top. These were Astroswitches, devices containing cosmic energy from the stars. He threw the switches to the two pseudo-yummies, who caught them and pressed the buttons. They were surrounded by blackness with constellations in front of them. One was the constellation Caelum (which is of a chisel), the other, Lyra (of a Lyre). The blackness faded as the constellations went on to their bodies and appeared as circles connected by lines. The pseudo-yummies had transformed into monsters known as zodiarts.

The first zodiart was a muscular male monster with grey skin. He had two spikes in his hands and was wearing a belt over his chest with more spikes.

The second zodiart was female. She had a green body and was wearing gold hoops around her wrists, shoulders and waist. She had short, black hair, black eyes and was carrying a gold lyre (a small, harp-like instrument) in one arm. On her left hip was mounted a small, golden sickle that was stylized to resemble a musical note.

"This is Lyra," Evan said gesturing to the female, "and Mason," he gestured to the male.

"Oh, I get it," Cerise said as she looked at Mason. "Mason, as in someone who works with stone."

"That's right," Evan said.

"I wouldn't have thought pseudo-yummies could become zodiarts," Nocturnal said in slight astonishment.

"To be fair," Evan began, "it took a lot of work. I had to spell them for several days to make them acceptable recipients for the cosmic energy inside the switches. And then it took several more days for them to get used to their new forms and start moving in a better manner."

"But now, for something else," Evan continued as he pulled a red Gaia Meory from his pocket. "This is for you, Faebelle," he said as he walked towards her with the memory extended. Faebelle was about to take it when Nocturnal interrupted.

"If you use that, it'll make you go crazy," the dark Kamen Rider said.

"What?" Faebelle asked as she stopped her hand.

"Not if you use it the way I have in mind," Evan said. He put the red memory in his pocket and raised one from the belt loop he was wearing. He pressed the button.

 **Bomb**

Yellow streams of energy came from the memory and went into Evan's arm. A small sphere of yellow energy appeared in his left hand. He threw the sphere into the air, where it flew up for about fifty and then exploded.

"Cooooooooool," Finelope said in admiration.

"You used the energy in the memory to cast a spell," Nocturnal said. "I didn't know that was possible."

"Neither did I until I tried," Evan explained. "The spell uses none of my magical reserves and since I'm not using it to turn into a Dopant like the creators intended, I'm spared from the mind altering side effects."

"That's great and all, Evan," Faebelle said semi-dismissively, "but what do you want me to do with that thing?"

"I think this memory can help turn into a dragon, like your mother did," Evan explained as he handed the red memory to Faebelle.

"Really," she said with peaked intrigue as she grabbed the memory. Dark fairies like Faebelle and her mother didn't gain the dragon transforming ability until at least their late-twenties because it involved a very difficult spell. She was very hexcited about transforming almost ten years ahead of schedule but this did bring one question to mind. "Why didn't you give this to me before?" she asked in a semi-angry tone.

"I was saving it for your birthday," Evan explained. "Now all you have to do is focus on turning into a dragon and then press the button."

"All right," Faebelle said as she closed her eyes and began focusing.

 **Dragon**

Streams of red energy went into Faebelle and she began changing. Her wings reseeded into her back and completely disappeared as her body was covered with obsidian scales. She gained a bit of muscle mass and was now slightly thicker. Small, triangular ridges appeared on her hands in between her knuckles. Black horns appeared on her forehead, curving along her head and then pointing upwards.

"Not quite what I hexpected," Faebelle said in a conflicted tone. On one hand, she greatly enjoyed the surge of power she had experienced but on the other hand, she knew that it was small compared to what she would have gotten from a full transformation. She did some punches and kicks and felt fairy powerful doing them. She stopped moving for a while as she tired to tap into more of her new power. She looked up towards the sky and unleashed a stream of fire that travelled for about ten feet. "Oh yeah! I could get used to this." There was a pause as something just occurred to Faebelle. "I have no idea what I look like right now: can one of you help me with that?"

"I've got you covered," Evan said. He created a small drop of what looked like mercury and floated over to right in front of Faebelle. The drop expanded into a circle that was three feet in diameter and was reflective like a mirror.

"I look surprisingly good in scales," Faebelle said joyfully. Her joy faded somewhat when she took a closer look. "It does look like I've put on a little weight though."

"It looks good on you," Finelope said. "Now you look like someone who occasionally eats."

"And you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" Faebelle shot back.

"So do you like this new ability?" Evan asked Faebelle, hoping to defuse things between her and Finelope.

"Oh, hex yeah," Faebelle answered.

"I'm glad to hear that," Evan said with a smirk. He didn't want to bring this up in front of his other allies, but he was hoping that the Dragon Gaia Memory would count as Faebelle's payment for helping him. "Cerise, Meiling, Finelope: can you all line up in front of me?"

The three girls did just that.

"I want the three of you to close your eyes and focus on how much you want to stop Foundation X," Evan said. The girls complied, not seeing the harm this could do. "Really think about how you want Foundation X gone. It is the only thing you desire."

 _I know where he's going with this_ , Raven thought to herself. _He's going to make yummies out of their desire to stop Foundation X_. Raven wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not. On one hand, it would increase their odds of victory. On the other hand, it meant Evan would get his hands on three more monsters.

Evan took out three Cell Medals and threw them at the three girls' heads. Slots briefly appeared on the girls' foreheads as the medals went inside them.

"What just happened?" Meiling asked.

"You'll find out soon enough," Evan said with yet another psychotic smirk.

About ten seconds later, three pseudo-yummies had emerged from the three girls. However, these pseudo-yummies were white instead of mostly black like the ones that had become Mason and Lyra.

Evan placed his hand in front of him and injected magic into the pseudo-yummies to help them mature faster. Shortly later, the two pseudo-yummies that came from Cersie and Meiling were surrounded by giant eggs while the remaining one transformed. That one had turned into a green female humanoid bee monster with antennae, small wings on her back, green compound eyes and a giant bee's thorax and stinger on the end of her right arm.

The egg around the pseudo-yummie that came from Meiling 'hatched'. It turned out to be a red female ostrich monster. She had dark red feathers around her waist and shoulders. There were small claws sticking out of her feet, which at the end of some very long legs.

Lastly, the egg around Cerise's pseudo-yummie 'hatched' into a black chicken monster with a large red head. This one had some kind of black strips on its shoulders and had thin arms which ended in what looked like boxing gloves.

"It worked!," Evan yelled triumphantly with his arms raise in the air. "What am I saying? Of course it worked: I'm awesome."

"These are monsters called yummies," Nocturnal began explaining to her friends. "Evan made them from your desire to fight Foundation X with special Medals he took from them."

"Why is my desire in the form of a chicken?" Cerise asked angrily.

"I don't know," Evan answered. "The medals didn't come with an instruction manual for me to steal. All I know for sure is that I can't make yummies from people who have magical abilities. I know that because failed attempts to make a yummy from myself. Which makes it a very good thing that the three of you volunteered for this, and I thank you."

 _Thank the universe for small miracles,_ Raven thought to herself. She didn't even want to think about a yummy born from Evan's sadistic and psychotic desires would be like.

Evan then began intently looking over the three yummies. "You'll be Olivia," he said to the ostrich, "you'll be Beatrice," he said to the bee, "and you will be Rocky," he said to the chicken.

"Rocky?" Cerise asked with a quirked eyebrow, not getting how Evan arrived at that name since it wasn't alliterative.

"Technically, he's a rooster," Evan began, "so I'm going with Rocky the rooster."

"Okay," Cerise said in understanding.

"Do we have to worry about any of your monsters attacking us?" Nocturnal asked. "I'm familiar with yummies and zodiarts, and neither of them are very good at restraint."

"Taken care of," Evan said. "I've worked my magic on them so they'll obey me and only attack who I want them to."

"That is not encouraging," Nocturnal said.

"Don't care," Evan shot back. "Now that I've assembled everyone who's going to fight, here's the plan. I've found the spot where Foundation X is entering this world: it's at an old rock quarry several miles from here. They're setting up a base of operations there but the going's been slow with that because their portal works intermittently: it stays open for a few hours, then closes for a longer stretch and so on. That, combined with how the cell of Foundation X we're fighting is mostly comprised of researchers instead of fighters makes me confident that we can stop them on our own."

"And what if they get help from other cells?" Nocturnal asked.

"They won't," Evan answered flatly. "The way a group like Foundation X works, they won't share the spoils or credit with other cells until they've claimed the lion's share for themselves. So what I'm thinking is that we'll spend the next few days for the upcoming battle and take the fight to them."

"Sounds good," Meiling said. While she greatly despised Evan, she had to admit that his ideas so far were tactically sound. Besides which, she was looking forward to fighting alongside and hopefully getting to know her friend Cerise.

"I'm glad you were able to make more help," Faebelle said. "I was worried at first when it looked like our only allies would be a walrus of a mermaid, a hormonally challenged Chinese girl, the daughter of the woman who screwed over my mother and is struggling to accept her fate and… I actually don't know enough about you, Cerise, to find a flaw about you."

"You forgot about the bratty toothpick cheerhexer," Finelope shot back.

"All right," Evan interjected, hoping to keep those two away from each other's throats for a bit, "none of us are hexactly first round draft picks for saving the world. But that doesn't mean we can't rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done."

 _To save my ass,_ Evan added mentally.


	3. Chapter 3

With all of that taken care off, the group of fairy teens and monsters began practicing for the upcoming battle. Evan took a punch of Cell Medals threw them into air, each Medal creating a pseudo-yummie. Since the pseudo-yummies were slow and could take a lot of damage, Evan decided that they would make great training dummies for Faebelle, Cerise and Meiling to practice on.

Faebelle was enjoying herself greatly as she was trying out her new dragonic abilities against some pseudo-yummies. She was leaping into the air with great ease, the dragon transformation increasing her acrobatic abilities that had been honed from many hours of cheerhexing practice. After jumping around and kicking the pseudo-yummies, she decided to try punching. Even in her dragonic form, upper-body strength wasn't her best area. Fortunately, the triangular ridges on her fingers focused the entire force of her punch into several small, very sharp points. She punched one pseudo-yummie and it made a great amount of sparks emit from where the ridges hit and made the creature stagger in pain.

While this was going on, Meiling and Cerise were practicing with their weapons against another group of pseudo-yummies. Meiling was taking advantage of their slowness to give herself significant distance with her quado and the pseudo-yummies were way too slow to touch Cerise as she slashed at them with her knives, which didn't seem to do much damage.

"If I may make a suggestion, Cerise," Meiling called out to the hooded girl.

"Sure," Cerise answered as she ran from some qseudo-yummies.

"You'll do more damage if you go for the joints. Like so," Meiling said as she swung her quado at the side of a pseudo-yummy. The blow caused the creature to stumble and fall forward, also this was mostly due to it being too slow to right itself.

Cerise decided to give this a try. She ran past a pseudo-yummy and slashed at it's elbow, making the creature's limb bend and lower. Pleased with this result, she slashed at the back of another pseudo-yummy's knee, making it stumble and fall down.

 _I think I'm going to like her_ , Cerise thought to herself with a smile.

While this was going on, Evan had turned towards Nocturnal after creating all the pseudo-yummies.

"So Raven," he began, "how would you like to spare with one of my monsters?"

"Bring it!" the dark Kamen Rider exclaimed as she held the Night Axe, ready for battle.

"Mason, go get her," Evan ordered. The Chisel zodiart moved to face Nocturnal.

Mason made the first move as he threw one of his spikes at Nocturnal, the projectile flying like a shot arrow. Nocturnal dodged the spike as she charged the zodiart, who threw another spike. This one hit Nocturnal in the side, causing spark damage and pain. Mason threw another spike but Nocturnal dodged to the side, switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and strung a few chords. Yellowish-green sound waves emanated and hit Mason, making him intensely dizzy. He threw another spike but his aim was way off. The dark Kamen Rider took this opportunity to close the distance between them and switch the Night Axe to axe mode. She struck Mason in the head, making him fall to the ground. Once on the ground, he countered by throwing a spike that hit Nocturnal in the stomach. She focused through the pain, moved to Mason's side and hit him with her axe. She hit him once more time before Evan told her to stop.

"Dirty, ruthless, opportunistic," Evan said, describing Nocturnal's fighting style. "I think I'm starting to like you."

"Don't you ever say that again!" Nocturnal yelled.

"Want to fight another monster?" Evan asked.

"Sure," Nocturnal said. "Which one?"

Evan looked over the other monsters he had. He decided to see how Raven would do against one of the new ones he just made.

"Olivia, you're up," he said to the Ostrich yummy.

Fire engulfed Olivia's right foot as she kicked and sent a fireball at Nocturnal. Nocturnal dodged the fireball, switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and struck a chord that sent a bolt of lightning from the tip. The bolt hit Olivia in the torso, causing a great amount of spark damage. Nocturnal switched the Night Axe back to axe mode and charged at the ostrich yummy.

Nocturnal swung her axe and missed as Olivia dodged to the side and then kicked the dark Kamen Rider twice. Nocturnal swung her axe and missed again as Olivia leapt over her head and then leapt off of her back, sending Nocturnal to the ground and herself away from the rider. She flipped in the air and landed about ten feet from Nocturnal.

Nocturnal stood up and faced Olivia just as the Ostrich yummy kicked another fireball at her. The fireball hit the dark Kamen Rider, causing some spark damage.

 _I haven't tried this one yet: hope it helps_ , Raven thought to herself as she played a few chords on the Night Axe that out a few pink sound waves towards Olivia. The waves hit Olivia, causing her to be tickled at several points on her body and break out in laughter (if one could call the honking she produced laughter) just as she about to shoot out another fireball. Instead, she lost her balance, fell backwards to the ground and shot her fireball at 50 degree angle towards the sky.

Once again, Nocturnal charged the Ostrich yummy as she switched the Night Axe to axe mode. She made it to Olivia and struck her twice with axe swings.

"That's enough Raven!" Evan yelled to get her attention. Nocturnal stopped swinging and faced him. "Want to go three for three?"

"No," Raven said as she dispelled her armor in a flash of black light. She then walked over to Evan's cart and sat down, deciding to take a small break since she was tired and bruised from her two fights. "Those two are tough. They'll definitely take a chunk out of Foundation X's forces."

"They didn't seem that tough against you," Evan said in slight disappointment.

"That's cause I fight dirty," Raven said. "Mason and Olivia would do probably do better against someone less skilled in that area."

"Hopefully," Evan said. He tossed some more Cell Medals into the air to create another batch of pseudo-yummies for Terry, Rocky, Lyra and Beatrice to practice against.

Lyra played a few strings on her lyre that caused some golden musical notes to appear and float into Beatrice. Beatrice raised her stinger and shot out needles that hit several pseudo-yummies with enough force to cause massive spark damage and make them fall down.

 _And to think that I was originally disappointed with Lyra_ , Evan thought. From earlier experimentation, he had found out that Lyra did not have much offensive power on her own. Her greatest abilities were using her lyre to create energy shields and power up the projectile attacks of her allies. Using those in combination with the abilities of his other monsters, Evan was feeling a lot better about what Lyra could contribute.

He looked over at what the remaining monsters were doing. Terry was using his huge size to bash and swipe at pseudo-yummies. Rocky stretched out the strips coming off his shoulders and they wrapped themselves around the legs of four pseudo-yummies. Rocky lifted them off the ground by their legs and started slamming them into each other.

"Hexcellent," Evan said, very pleased with how his preparations were coming together. He then walked over to Finelope to see how she was doing. She was shooting at the floating light target Evan had created for her and doing a fairy good job of hitting it.

 _Why does this feel so right?_ Finelope thought to herself as she shot off another green bolt. Thanks to her strength, she had no problem from the spell rifle's recoil and was able to make the shots hit what she aimed at, for the most part.

"How are things going, sweetness?" Evan asked as he gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

"Great," Finelope answered. "I want to try hitting a moving target next."

"That can be arranged," Evan said. He used his magic to make the light target start flying around in a figure eight pattern. Finelope got accounted for how the target was moving, lined up a shot and fired. Her shot just missed the target but she didn't let this deter her as she lined up another shot.

Meanwhile, Cerise and Meiling had finished with their group of pseudo-yummies. Meiling was now showing Cerise proper footwork for a good blade swing.

"Fairy good, Cerise," Meiling said.

"Thank you," Cerise said. "I take it that you're the girl from Woo's butcher shop that Raven borrowed these knives from?" Cerise asked and Meiling nodded yes. "How hexactly do you and Raven know each other?"

Meiling began telling Cerise about they met as a result of Michigo asking for help to deal with Evan. Of course she left out a few important details, such as she and Michigo being the same person or who Meiling really was the daughter of. With that taken care of, they resumed training. Meiling was starting to like Cerise and was impressed with what she could do with those knives.

Raven got up from the cart and resumed training as well. Everyone kept practicing for the next few hours. When the sun had nearly set, they decided to call it quits.

"I'm thinking that you should hang on to the spell rifle for now," Evan said to Finelope after having recharged the energy capsules. "Do you have somewhere you can keep it?"

"I've got somewhere in mind," Finelope said, planning to store it at Meiling's dojo.

"All right," Evan said, then turned to face everyone in the group. "We'll all meet back here tomorrow to resume preparations. Good night."

Evan left in his cart as it was being pulled by Terry as his other monsters followed on foot.

"And good night to you as well," Meiling said to Cerise, the two of them along with Finelope and Raven standing next to eachother. "It was fairy nice training alongside you today, Cerise."

"Same here," Cerise said. "I hope to get to know both of you better," she said, her eyes lingering on Finelope. "Seriously, you're dating Evan? He's a total dick."

"Not to me," Finelope explained. "Besides, I know nothing serious is going to come from this: for one thing, things can only go so far due to physical incompatabilities. I'm just trying to enjoy myself."

"That makes sense," Cerise said.

The girls said goodbye to each other. Meiling got behind Finelope's wheelchair and unfolded two small foot-stands that were near the bottom. She stepped on and Finelope rode them back to her dojo. Raven summoned Demona from the infernal plain she called home and her and Cerise got on and rode back to school. Faebelle had started flying back on her own fairy power some time ago.


	4. Chapter 4

After classes the next day, the unlikely alliance of fairy teens and monsters had reconvened in the dark forest.

"In case some of you have been wondering," Evan began as he spoke to the group, "I do have a plan in mind to stop Foundation X. Want to hear it?"

Everyone nodded yes.

"Here's the plan," Evan continued. "I'll get the attention of everyone at their base and dispatch their lowly footsoldiers with several of my Gaia Memories. After that, the rest of you will fight their remaining forces while I sneak in through their portal with help from the Indivisible memory and destroy the machine generating it."

"I like this plan," Meiling said. "I especially like the part where you go behind enemy lines all by yourself."

"I figured you would," Evan said.

Raven and Cerise shared Meiling's approval of this plan. Normally, they would be reluctant to accept any plan of his but since he was volunteering for the most dangerous part, they would go along with it.

"With the portal generator destroyed," Evan continued, "I will come back to this world and attempt to close the portal with my magic."

"How do you know the portal won't close on it's own after the machine is destroyed?" Faebelle asked.

"I must have forgotten to mention that," Evan said. "Remember how I said that Foundation X's portal opened and closed intermentantly?" Everyone nodded yes. "Well, the portal is becoming increasingly stable. It will probably linger for a while after being cut off from its power source. After I close the portal, we can retreat if the battle has not been going in our favor. Any remaining Foundation X forces won't be much of a threat to anyone stuck in a foreign world and cut off from their organization."

"Sounds good," Raven said. With the fate of their world possibly at stake, she was glad to know that in this case winning was not a condition for victory.

"There is one thing I would like to bring up," Meiling said. "Wouldn't it make more tactical sense to weaken the Foundation X forces with hit and run attacks before the major engagement?"

"It would," Evan admitted, "but right now, Foundation X has no idea that anyone in this world knows they're here. If we send out a hit and run attack, that will change. They'll redouble their efforts to fortify their camp, maybe even swallow their pride and ask for help from other cells. If they do that second thing, it will mean more people in Foundation X will know about this world, so I think it would best to stop them all at once."

"A sound tactic," Meiling conceded.

"There's one last thing," Evan continued. "Remember how I said that their portal is becoming increasingly stable?" Everyone nodded yes. "If we wait too long, the portal will become so stable that it won't be possible to close it and Foundation X will have a permanent foothold in this universe. We'll need to attack soon."

"How soon?" Finelope asked.

"This upcoming Friday," Evan said. Friday would be a good day since they could go into battle after classes without worrying about how it would affect their abilities to attend classes the following day. But one problem with that would be that Friday was only two days away. "We could go on Saturday, but I want to attack sooner so their portal can't stabilize."

The five girls stared at Evan after hearing this. They were all thinking that they weren't confident about fighting Foundation X after only a few days of training (and they'd only had one so far). However, they were also thinking that with all of Evan's talk about the portal stabilizing, putting the battle off for even just one day could lead to disastrous results.

"Why don't we vote on when we should battle after training today?" Faebelle asked. Everyone nodded yes and then went off to do their own thing. After a while, everyone was set for what they wanted to do and started training. Finelope was practicing shooting the spell rifle while moving on her wheelchair, Raven and Faebelle had transformed and were sparring with the monsters Evan had created while Meiling was teaching Cerise some of the finer points on wielding a blade.

Once everyone was preoccupied with their own business, Evan created a duplicate of himself using a magic-enhancing artifact that he wore as a toe-ring. With the duplicate made, Evan snuck off away from everyone. When he was away, he pulled up a Gaia Memory and pressed the button.

 **Invisible**

Evan vanished and then walked around everyone else. He came up behind Meiling and Cerise as they were training.

 _All right, Michigo_ , Evan thought. _I don't know what you're trying to pull introducing yourself under another name or suddenly being so ripped, but I'm going to find out._ He took a glove out from his pocket and put it on his right hand.

Evan invisibly walked up to Meiling. As he got closer, Cerise smelled something that seemed to belong to an object that wasn't there. She looked around, but didn't see what the smell belonged to.

"Is something wrong, Cerise?" Meiling asked. Before Cerise could answer, Evan put his hand on Meiling's head. His hand sunk into Meiling's head as the glove's magic started working and Evan began looking through her thoughts.

Meiling was in intense pain as Evan did what he came for but didn't scream out. After about five seconds, Meiling was able to get a grip and moved her elbow to hit what thought was an unseen attacker. Her blow connected, causing Evan to release his hold on her mind as he fell backwards. Meiling turned around and saw him.

"Evan," she said with a barely contained fury. She pointed her sword's tip at his crotch and lowered it just an inch away. "If you don't start explaining yourself, I'm going to cut you in ways that will make it impossible for you to spread your demon seed to future generations."

"I wanted answers," Evan said in panic and began taking shallow breaths. "I wanted to know what you were trying to accomplish by using a fake name. But it turns out, you'd been using a fake name for quite a while and used your real one when I set up this endeavor."

"What the hex are you talking about?" Cerise asked.

"I've been attending Ever After High for weeks," Meiling began. She decided to share who she really was with Cerise because now that the hooded girl knew there was a big secret going on with her, Cerise might try to find out on her own which could complicate things. It would be safer to just come clean right here. Besides, she liked Cerise.

"I've been going to Ever After High in disguise as princess Michigo," Meiling continued. "As Michigo, I've expressed disdain with Evan for pursuing Finelope. He must have recognized me when I introduced myself to him as Meiling." She steeled her gaze as she looked at Evaan. "How much did you learn when you invaded my mind?"

"I know who you're really the daughter of," Evan said. "I know the unusual nature of your attendance at EA High is approved by some fairy influential people that I have nothing to gain from pissing them off by exposing you, which means you can trust me to keep my mouth shut."

Meiling glared at him for a bit before sheathing her sword.

"Fairy well," she said as she sheathed her sword. "Now get out of my sight before I change my mind about that demon seed thing."

Evan got up and began running away, not wanting to press his luck. He was telling the truth about having not exposing Meiling. He had no desire to get involved in the kind of politics that were going on with Meiling.

With that out of the way, Meiling looked at Cerise.

"You must have some questions," she said and Cerise nodded yes. "Let me start by properly introducing myself: I am Fa Meiling, daughter of Fa Mulan, first and greatest female warrior of China."

Just like before with Raven, Meiling began telling Cerise all about who she really was: Headmaster Grimm desperately wanting to bring in more Asian students, allowing Meiling to attend the school if she concealed her true identity, Meiling's reasons for accepting these terms and how she attended half-day classes at EA High before going off to train at her private dojo in Woo's butcher shop.

"Can I trust you to keep this between you, me, Raven and Finelope? Meiling asked.

"Absolutely," Cerise said.

 _So Raven knew about this_ , Cerise thought to herself, then began thinking of the implications of that. _It's good to know that she can keep a secret._

"I actually have a pretty big secret of my own," Cerise said.

"I doubt it could be that bi..." Meiling stopped as Cerise removed her hood and displayed her wolf ears. The well-toned Asian girl's mouth hung open in shock for over five seconds. "I stand corrected."

...

Meanwhile, back with Raven and Faebelle, the two girls had practiced against Evan's monsters while only taking minor injuries. Nocturnal had successfully kept them off-balance with her arsenal of disorienting spells while Faebelle had been too agile for them to land a solid hit. They now faced each other.

"Want to try your luck against me?" Nocturnal asked.

"Gladly," Faebelle said enthusiastically. She had been hoping to trade blows with Raven ever since getting the Dragon Gaia Memory so she get some revenge on Raven for what her mother did to Faebelle's.

Faebelle charged Nocturnal, who held her Night Axe in guitar mode and played a few chords, sending out brown sound waves hit Faebelle and increased her weight by three times. Faebelle stopped in her tracks from the sudden increase in weight as Nocturnal switched the Night Axe to axe mode and charged. Faebelle countered by taking a deep breath and blowing a large amount smoke at the dark Kamen Rider, completely obscuring her vision.

Nocturnal took a blind swing with her axe and missed. Faebelle moved behind Nocturnal and punched her, causing spark damage. Faebelle followed through with another punch just as the gravity spell wore off on her. Nocturnal turned around while swinging her axe and Faebelle ducked to avoid the swing.

Nocturnal dematerialized the Night Axe, deciding that the weapon was too cumbersome for Faebelle's agility. Faebelle stood up and threw another punch that Nocturnal pushed aside with an elbow block. Nocturnal hit Faebelle with an open palm strike to the torso then kicked the side of Faebelle's right knee, setting her off-balance. Nocturnal then delivered an elbow strike to Faebelle's head, sending her to the ground.

"Do you yield?" Nocturnal asked.

Faebelle thought this over for a few seconds. She didn't want to admit defeat to Raven but she wasn't in much condition to continue fighting.

"I yield," Faebelle said begrudgingly as she got up and reverted back to her fairy form.

"Good, because I can't go on much further either," Nocturnal said as she dispelled her armor. "That smoke trick of yours is impressive. I was sure that killing your agility with the gravity spell would mean I'd kick your ass but you found a way to counter that. But didn't anyone ever tell you that smoking is for losers?" Faebelle snickered at Raven's joke.

"And I really thought," the future dark fairy began, "that I'd kick your ass if I could get in too close for your axe to be effective but you proved me wrong on that account. Seriously, how did you learn to fight like that?"

"A friend showed me a few things," Raven said.

 _Thank you so much, Meiling_ , Raven thought.

The two of them decided to rest a bit before resuming training.

A few hours later, the sun was starting to set. Everyone had gathered to discuss their next course of action.

"So do we attack Friday or Saturday?" Evan asked.

"I vote Friday," Faebelle said. "I feel confident about with how I've the hang of my new abilities and I don't think waiting another day will help much more: especially if while we're waiting, Foundation X's portal becomes permanently stable."

"I agree with Faebelle," Meiling said.

Raven, Cerise and Finelope nodded with this.

"Then we'll attack in two days," Evan said.

Evan turned to leave with his monsters, while Faebelle began flying back to Book End. This gave Raven, Cerise, Finelope and Meiling some much needed privacy to go over some things.

"So Raven," Cerise began, "Meiling and I had an interesting conversation earlier where we told each other our deepest secrets."

"So you know about how she's been going to school as Michigo?" Finelope asked.

"Yes," Cerise answered. "And so that we're all on the same page, I think you should know about this." Cerise removed her hood and showed her wolf ears to the plus-sized mermaid.

"That's not normal, is it?" Finelope asked in a tone that indicated she already knew the answer to that.

"No," Cerise said before putting her hood back on. "I have to keep this a secret because as far as most people are concerned, my mom fell for the wrong guy and I'm a product of that."

"Ah," Finelope said in understanding. "I may not know what qualifies as normal for life on the surface, but I do know about familial complications. Up till about a year ago, I thought my family was a typical kelp farming family. Then we get a visit from the king, who I soon find out is my grandpa, and I learn all about how my mom used to be a princess but was tail-slapped out of the royal family when she choose to be with my dad."

"Then King Grandpa," Finelope continued, "says he wants to undisown my mom, or whatever the actual term is, and make her royalty again. Turns out that since she was tail-slapped out, my aunt Coralleen, the future queen, was discovered to be infertile: the most likely explanation everyone has is that it's the result of when she had a bad case of red tide fever when she eleven. And my uncle Tidus personally dealt with an invading warlord who had a small army of trained attack sharks. Uncle Tidus repelled the invader, but not before taking a nasty shark bite to the tail. I'll spare you the details of merman anatomy but the important thing is, he's in no condition to sire any heirs."

"So your grandpa," Cerise said, "only wanted your mother back so she could give birth to more heirs?"

"Hexactly," Finelope said. "Mom is happy to be back in the castle, but she's much less happy that she only got invited back because Grandpa wanted to keep the throne within his bloodline. That's part of why I went along with the plan for me to attend Ever After High: while I'm up here, things can adjust down there. Also, I don't want to be around mom and dad while they're attempting to conceive."

"Understandable," Raven said.

Upon hearing of her own family situation, Cerise was glad that she had decided to share her secret with Finelope.

And with that, the four girls headed back to Book End, a stronger bond forming between them due to everything that had been shared.


	5. Chapter 5

The next few days, the group of teenagers and monsters continued to train for the upcoming battle. Nothing of any particular importance happened during this time: Finelope greatly improved at using the spell rifle, Meiling imparted what she knew of combat to Cerise, who turned out to be a quick study. Raven and Faebelle practiced fighting against the monsters Evan had created to hone their skills. The two girls had had a few more matches against each other, Faebelle winning some and Raven winning most. Raven's bag of dirty tricks and superior hand-to-hand fighting skills beat out the dark fairy more often than that, but Faebelle's fire breath was powerful (when she hadn't used it up fighting the monsters) and Raven had no counter for that.

The sun was setting on Thrusday evening. Raven, Cerise, Finelope and Meiling were going to have a rather large dinner at a restaurant in the Asian section of Book End.

"I think we should invite Evan and Faebelle," Finelope said to the other three girls.

"Seeing as we're about to go into battle with them," Meiling began, "I see no problem with this."

"I'm indifferent," Cerise said.

Raven thought this over for a bit. While she would normally be against this, her recent semi-friendly interactions with the two had convinced her that it was possible to socialize with them and not have it turn into a disaster. _Besides,_ Raven thought, _antagonizing Faebelle with her infamous rejection issues right before the big battle can only lead to bad things._

"Fine, but I'm not extending the invitation," Raven said.

"Leave that to me," Finelope said as she rode up to the two and got their attention. "We're about to grab dinner at this place in Asia town. You two want in?"

"Sure," Faebelle said with a grin. While she didn't personally like the other girls that much, she disliked being left out of stuff even more. "I haven't had Asian food before."

"Oh, you're in for a real treat," Finelope told her, then looked to her kind-of boyfriend. "And you?"

"Of course I'll join you, my voluptuous aquatic beauty," Evan said. "I'll be a while though: I need to take the monsters back to my hole in the ground. After that, I'll teleport into town with the waypoint I've set up. I shouldn't be that far behind you."

"See you soon," Finelope said and then pulled Evan close so she could give him a quick peck on the lips.

Evan left with his monsters and the girls headed back to Book End. It didn't take them long traveling with Raven's horse, Finelope's magic carpet upholstered wheelchair and Faebelle's fairy wings. When they got to the restaurant, they were led to a big table in a private room that the restaurant owners gave to Meiling's party because of who she was the daughter of. Meiling ordered for them: they'd be getting a lot of different dishes that they would sample from.

"Can you change into your dragon form, Faebelle?" Finelope asked.

"Why do you want me to do that?" the future dark fairy asked.

"I want to see how strong that form is," Finelope said as she put her elbow on the table to indicate that she wanted to arm wrestle.

"Sure," Faebelle answered with a smile as she took out her Gaia Memory and pressed the button.

 **Dragon**

Faebelle changed into her dragon form and sat down across from the plus-sized mermaid. The two of them locked arms and began pushing against each other. They were tied against each other for about ten seconds and then Faebelle pushed Finelope's arm against the table.

"Best two out of three," Finelope said as she retook the arm wrestling position and then her mirror-phone went off. "On second thought, let me check this." She took out the phone from a small bag on her wheelchair and saw that Evan had sent her a hext message. "I'm gonna go get Evan. I won't be long."

Finelope left the restaurant and came back about five minutes later with Evan, who sat down at the table.

"Miss me ladies?" Evan asked with a smirk and got glares in return. "Fair enough." He then noticed what Faebelle currently looked like. "Why are you in your dragon form?"

"We'll explain later," Finelope said as she went to the table and assumed the arm wrestling position. Faebelle sat down and they began pushing against each other. Once again, Finelope put up a good fight before having her arm pinned to the table.

"Damn," Finelope said.

The teens then began making small talk while waiting for their food. Eventually, servers came out and placed several large plates on the table. Everyone started putting stuff on their plates with large spoons and began eating.

"What are those?" Raven asked Meiling, referring to her strange choice of eating implements.

"They're called chopsticks," Meiling answered. "They're what's been used for eating for many centuries." Meiling then used the chopsticks to eat some noodles.

"How the hex did you do that?" Raven asked, completely bewildered as to how Meiling was able to use the small wooden sticks like that.

"It takes practice," Meiling said.

"As fascinating as that was," Faebelle interjected, "you might want to pick up your pace if you want to get any food before Finelope and Cerise eat it all."

The mermaid and wolf-girl had packed their plates and started eating pretty quickly.

"Wow, you can really chow down," Finelope said in admiration and then continued eating.

Faebelle took a bite of some sweet and sour chicken. She closed her eyes and smiled as she was overtaken by the flavor. Her wings fluttered rapidly and lifted her several inches off of her chair before she regained her composure and retook her seat.

"This is delicious," Faebelle said as she spooned more chicken onto her plate before Cerise and Finelope ate it all.

They all continued eating. When done, they split the check, which was less than the restaurant's usual prices on account of the owners knowing who Meiling really was.

"That was good," Faebelle said. "Although, seriously Finelope: you shouldn't eat like this all the time. And before you say anything, I'm talking about the health aspects of your weight, not just your appearance. You're with me on this, right Meiling?"

"While I do think she should cut down on junk food," Meiling said, "I'm not hexactly in a good position to talk to her about that since I'm also overweight by most standards." Meiling flexed her bicep to show what she meant.

"And as you should have been able to figure out when we were arm wrestling," Finelope began, "some of my bigness is muscle, so my health isn't as bad as you think. And if we're talking about weight, it would probably be healthy for you to gain a few pounds: you look more malnourished than in shape. Plus you might grow some tits."

"Touche," Faebelle said with a slight smile, impressed with the plus-sized mermaid's ability to stand up for herself.

They all said their goodbyes and left to rest for the battle tomorrow.

...

At last, the big day was here. The unlikely alliance of fairy teens and monsters had gathered after classes were done. They made their way over to the quarry where Foundation X had their camp. The camp was made up of several tents containing various kinds of supplies and equipment. There weren't many humans at the camp at the moment: many kinds of foot soldiers were walking around, prepared to fight any threat that may come. There were pseudo-yummies in the defense force, along with humanoids dressed in black ninja-like outfits wielding long, curved swords. These were called Dustards, constructs made of the same cosmic energy that powered Astro Switches. Lastly, there were also lowly grunts of Foundation X wearing black suits who were currently Masquerade Dopants, black humanoids with skeletal patterns on their body who had been empowered (give a liberal defention of the word) by the cheap to mass produce Masquerade Gaia Memory. The portal was currently open in the middle of the camp.

Evan looked at this through a telescope to get sense of the enemy's defenses. In addition to his belt of Gaia Memories, he was wearing a brown coat that had many pockets inside.

"We can take 'em," Evan said to the girls and monsters as he put the telescope away. "But before we do that, let me introduce you to the final member of our team."

Evan concentrated and created a duplicate of himself several feet to his left.

"Now there's two of you," Raven said with great worry.

"If it makes you feel better," the duplicate began, "I don't have any magic."

"It does," Raven said.

"I call him E2," Evan began. "Despite not having any magic, he can come in handy for anything that involves an extra pair of hands. I usually just use him to do my thronework and play video games with. But with this," Evan said as he pulled out a golden headband and gave it to E2, who put it on.

"I can give psychic commands to our monsters," E2 finished.

"Use this if you have to," Evan said as he teleported a crowbar into his right hand and gave it to E2.

"Why a crowbar?" Meiling asked.

"Why not a crowbar?" E2 retorted, to which Meiling could only shrug in agreement. "Now let's go kick some ass."

"But first, this," Evan said as he threw a bunch of Cell Medals into the air and and conjured around thirty pseudo-yummies. The plan they had devised in advance was for Finelope and Beatrice to hit the foes with projectile attacks while the pseudo-yummies acted as a defensive line for them.

They all began walking towards Foundation X's camp, with Evan in the lead. They were seen coming some distance away, so one of the Masquerade Dopants went to inform the people in charge while the rest of the forces charged. Evan smiled as he brought up a Gaia Memory and activated it.

 **Virus**

Evan shot out a large beam of yellowish-green energy out at the foot soldiers. They all collapsed to the group and began coughing as they were infected. Another group charged and Evan brought up another memory and activated it.

 **Old**

He shot brown energy at that group. They fell to the ground as they aged decades instantly. The remaining foot soldiers charged and fared as poorly as the others.

 **Sweets**

Evan activated another Memory and shot out a yellow, batter-like substance from his hand. The 'batter' hit the foot soldiers' feet and stuck them in place. Beatrice and Finelope used this as an opportunity to shoot at the immobilized soldiers while Mason threw a few spikes. This finished off all the minions.

With that out of the way, several people wearing Foundation X's signature lab coat/business suit attire walked up to their group. There were six people: three Asian men, one Asain woman, and one hispanic man who were following one other man. The guy in charge was muscular and appeared to be of some kind of mixed ancestry. He had dark skin, short blonde hair and was standing at an imposing six foot seven. He had a black crossbow strapped to his right arm that Astro Switch attached to a circular receptacle at the back.

"My name is Jason Stonehart," the muscular man identified himself. "I'm in charge here. And you're the piece of shit who's been stealing our stuff."

"That's right," Evan admitted. "Now get your asses out of my universe."

"No chance," Stonehart replied. "This universe is quite different from the one we came from. This has the potential to open entire new fields of research. Now hand over the materials you've stolen from us and the monsters you've made with them and I will make your death quick and painless instead of long and agonizing."

"Suck my balls!" Evan yelled back. "I'm not scared of you guys: I've got allies, and monsters and most importantly, her," he finished by placing his hands on Raven's shoulders.

"She doesn't look so scary," one of the Asian men retorted. Evan took his hands off of Raven and looked at her.

"Why haven't you changed yet?" Evan asked.

"Oh right," Raven said as she summoned the Nocturnal Driver around her waist and a purple aura appeared around her right hand as she called on most of her magic. "Henshin," Raven cried out as she channelled her magic into the Driver and transformed into Kamen Rider Nocturnal. The members of Foundation X were taken aback by this.

"That's right," Evan said with a grin. "I've got a Kamen Rider on my side. And she's not the only one: there are dozens of Kamen Riders in the world."

 _He must be trying to bluff them into backing down_ , the girls of the group deduced, because this was not part of their plan.

"And where are these dozens of Riders right now?" Stonehart asked.

"They're... all very busy right now," Evan answered pathetically.

"That's the best you've got?" Nocturnal said to Evan in a somewhat hushed tone.

"Shut up you," Evan retorted. Meanwhile, Stonehart looked at the unlikely alliance with a growing smile.

"I think the only rider you have is this one," he said. "Which suits me fine: I'll be the first in Foundation X to kill a Kamen Rider."

"It was worth a shot," Evan said meekly in his own defense to Nocturnal.

While this happened Stonehart began changing and he removed his clothes. He became even bigger, his hands became claws and he grew yellow fur over his body. When the process ended, he had become a large, humanoid lion monster. He still wielded the crossbow on his right arm, the straps adjusting for the new width of his forearm. Stonehart was a mutamid, one who had undergone genetic alterations from Foundation X.

"Carlos, stay back in case I need you," Stonehart ordered to the hispanic man. "Everyone else: the Kamen Rider is mine. Take the others, but leave at least one alive for questioning."

The four Asian members from Foundation X took Cell Medals they had on them and inserted them into their own foreheads. Out popped four pseudo-yummies who quickly turned into insect yummies based on the desire to destroy Evan and Raven's allies.

One of the monsters was a large, muscular humanoid with a yellow chest, black body and a horn resembling that of a rhinoceros beetle. Another one looked similar to that but was smaller and had horns resembling that a stag beetle. Another was somewhat muscular and looked like a big, green grasshopper. The last one was also green, but was smaller than the grasshopper Yummy and wielded a pair of short, sickle shaped blades. That was the mantis Yummy.

Two of the four Foundation X members pulled out Gaia Memories and activated them.

 **Arms**

 **Ice Age**

The Asian woman put the Arms memory into the side of her neck and changed into a humanoid with metal armor on her chest and red legs. Her left arm ended in a short, red gatling gun and she had a large metal sword strapped to her back. One Asian man put the Ice Age memory into his left arm and changed into what looked like a slim, white bird-man with black feathers sticking from his shoulders.

The remaining Asian men pulled out Astro Switches and pressed them. They were encased in blackness as the constellation Orion appeared in front of one and the Constellation appeared in front of the other. The Orion zodiart was a large humanoid covered mostly in red that had the pattern of the Orion constellation on its front. He wielded a club it held like a sword in one hand a shield in the other. The Whale zodiart was a large blue humanoid with a whale's head, the pattern of the constellation on his body and wielded a pole-arm that ended in a whale's tail.

Faebelle took out her Dragon memory.

 **Dragon**

She absorbed the energy and changed into her dragonic form.

And with that, the battle was on.


	6. Chapter 6

Lyra played her lyre and sent two golden musical notes that hit Cerise and Meiling, creating invisible shields around the two that would lessen any damage they took.

 _And here I go_ , Evan thought as he held up a Gaia Memory.

 **Invisible**

He absorbed its energy and became invisible.

Kamen Rider Nocturnal decided that if Stonehart wanted to fight her so much, she would oblige him. As she charged him, he pressed the Astro Switch attached to his forearm-mounted crossbow, energizing it with cosmic energy from his star sign, the Arrow constellation. He shot a bolt at Nocturnal, who dodged it. She dodged another one as she summoned the Night Axe and struck a few chords, sending pink sound waves at the lion man. Stonehart was instantly tickled at several points on his body, causing him to break out in laughter and prevent him from shooting at Nocturnal. The dark rider took this opportunity to charge towards him and strike him in the shoulder with her axe. This caused minor spark damage but didn't seem to hurt him that much.

 _This could be a problem_ , Raven thought to herself.

Meanwhile, everyone else had began fighting. Cerise and Meiling went after the mantis Yummy, Faebelle decided to try her luck against the grasshopper yummy and E2 had directed his monsters to fight the remainders based on what on what would give them and advantage.

Mason threw a spike at the Orion Zodiart, who blocked it with his shield. E2 gave him a psychic command to try something else and Mason complied, throwing another spike at Orion's club-like sword, knocking it out of his hands. Orion wanted to reclaim his weapon but decided that it wasn't worth the risk of turning his back to the spike thrower.

Rocky and Olivia squared off with the Whale Zodiart. Rocky sent out his wraps and wrapped them around his tail-staff weapon. The Rooster Zodiart pulled on the weapon but couldn't get it to budge from its owner. Olivia went next to the wraps, raised her foot over her head and stuck down on them, the extra force relieving Whale of his weapon. Olivia then charged at Whale, but he caught her off-guard by unleashing a stream of water from his mouth. The stream his Olivia, knocking her to the ground and greatly weakening her due to her being a fire-elemental creature like all bird yummies.

Whale then charged at Rocky, who was now wielding the tail-staff weapon. He tried to strike Whale with his own weapon, but Whale grabbed the staff and then kicked Rocky in the stomach, making him stumble back a few feet. Whale struck Rocky with his weapon, using the side of the tail like an axe.

The Mantis Yummy tried to strike Cerise with one of his sickles but the half-wolf girl nimbly dodged the blow and then knocked both sickles out of his hands with her knives. She began quickly slashing him, causing very little spark damage with each hit. Mantis tackled her and sent her rolling back several feet (fortunately, it didn't hurt that much thanks to Lyra's shield).

Mantis didn't have any time to appreciate this as Meiling struck with a thrust of her quado. Mantis threw a punch that she sidestepped and countered by striking the back of his knee. With the bug creature put off-balance, Meiling struck at his head and sent him to the ground. She then brought her quado over her head and swung down, dealing moderate spark damage.

The Grasshopper Yummy tried to hit Faebelle with a leaping kick but the future dark fairy evaded the blow. She got in two quick jabs that caused spark damage thanks to her knuckle ridges then jumped over him and kicked him in the head, leaping off some distance. The Mantis Yummy countered by shooting a bolt of green lightning from his antennae that hit Faebelle, causing serious spark damage and sending her to the ground.

 _Damn_ , Faebelle thought as the pain coursed through her and she got back up. _I thought I could beat this guy while saving my dragon fire for someone else, but I'm too pissed for that._

The Mantis Yummy jumped into the air for another leaping kick that Faebelle dodged by jumping back a few feet. Right before the Mantis landed, Faebelle jumped towards him and punched him in the chest, the combination of her momentum and knuckle ridges doing significant damage and making him stumble back a few feet. She followed through by releasing a smokescreen from her mouth. She began punching him while stepping back to attack from a different angle. Mantis tried flaying around to blindly hit Faebelle but none of his blows connected, although they did dispel the smokescreen.

Faebelle had got in eight punches while the smokescreen was up. She jumped a few feet into the air and delivered a two-legged kick to Mantis's chest, sending him to the ground before she backflipped and landed. She then unleashed a powerful stream of dragon fire at the inspect Yummy, causing spark damage all over his body. When the flame ended, he burst into an explosion, releasing a multitude of Cell Medals.

The Rhinoceros Beetle and Stag Beetle Yummies were currently trying to get through Evan's defensive line of pseudo-yummies to go after Finelope, Beatrice and Lyra. Finelope shot at the Stag Beetle Yummy with her spell rifle, causing spark damage. One of the pseudo-yummies took this as an opportunity to hit Stag Beetle, who countered the blow and sent that one and the one next to it to the ground. While he did that, Finelope let off another shot that hit him.

The Rhinoceros Beetle Yummy was plowing through pseudo-yummies while Lyra played her lyre, which sent some golden musical notes into Beatrice, powering her up. Beatrice fired several stinger spikes at the Rhinoceros Beetle, Lyra's spell boosting their attack strength enough to pierce his armor, causing major spark damage and making him stumble back a few feet. E2 saw this and threw a bunch of Cell Medals at the Rhinoceros Beetle monster. The Medals turned into six pseudo-yummies that fell on top of the Beetle creature, pinning it to the ground.

The Arms Dopant had blasted all the pseudo-yummies around her into dust with her gatling gun. She saw how Beatrice and Lyra had greatly hurt Rhinoceros Beetle, drew her sword, transformed her gatling gun into a sword blade and charged. She stabbed Beatrice with the sword arm and slashed Lyra with the normal sword. Lyra was knocked back a bit from the force of the blow while Beatrice countered stabbing Arms with her stinger arm. The blow only did minor damage and performed a one-two combo with both her blades that Beatrice to the ground.

While that happened, Lyra played her lyre to create an invisible shield around herself like she had done for Cerise and Meiling. She put her lyre on her left hip, drew her sickle and struck Arms from behind, doing very minor spark damage. Arms spun around and tried to hit Lyra with her sword but the musical Zodiart ducked the blow and delivered another sickle strike. Arms stabbed Lyra with her sword arm but she took little damage thanks to her shield.

Terry charged at the Ice Age Dopant after being directed to do so by E2. Ice Age tried to slow the cat Yummy down with a powerful blast of cold but Terry's fat provided hexcellent insulation (just as E2 had hoped). Terry slashed twice at Ice Age, causing spark damage. Ice Age knew he couldn't take on Terry alone so he turned around, created a sheet of ice on the ground and slid away on it towards Whale.

Rocky and Whale had kept fighting, neither making any headway. Rocky had started using his wraps to parry the tail-staff away from him but his punches were doing almost no damage to the sea mammal Zodiart.

Ice Age came up on Rocky from behind and hit with a large blast of intense cold that caused spark damage all over his back. Whale sent Rocky to the ground with tail-staff, then used the side of the tail as a makeshift executioner's axe to deliver a powerful blow to Rocky's head, causing him to explode and release many cell medals.

Olivia recovered from Whale's water attack just as Rocky was being destroyed. Her right foot was engulfed by flame as she kicked a fireball towards Ice Age, which hit and caused a moderate amount of damage thanks to Ice Age being vulnerable to fire attacks. While this was going on, Terry was struggling to catch up to Ice Age but was going slow due to his size. When he saw Ice Age get hit by the fireball, he fired an orb of yellow energy from his hand that also hit Ice Age.

"let's finish him off and deal with the bird thing," Ice Age said and Whale grunted in agreement. They both charged at Terry.

Once in range, Whale unleashed another water blast that drenched Terry. Ice Age then hit him with a powerful freezing onslaught. Spark damage erupted all over Terry as the water on him froze. Terry then fell backwards and exploded, releasing a large amount off Cell Medals.

Olivia saw this and decided that she did not want to try her luck fighting them by herself. She turned around and ran towards Mason.

Mason had been dominating his fight against the Orion Zodiart. After yanking Orion's shield away from him, Mason had stabbed Orion many times with his spikes and was about to finish him when Olivia came near. She leapt into the air, fire engulfing her feet and she hit Orion with a leaping kick. Orion reverted back to his human form and landed on his back as his Astro Switch rolled away from him. He was clutching his chest in pain and was in no condition to continue fighting. Fortunately, Olivia motioned for Mason to look at Ice and Whale coming towards them, so they had no interest in going after him.

Meanwhile, Finelope was trying to blast the Stag Beetle Yummy but he was dodging all her shots while attempting to close the distance between them. Finelope could easily maintain distance thanks to her flying carpet-equipped wheelchair, but decided to let Stag Beetle get in close so he would make himself an easier target. She began removing the energy capsule from the spell rifle so she could reload with a fresh one from her bandolier while Stag beetle closed in. She had reloaded when Stag Beetle was only seven feet away. Finelope surprised the insect Yummy by having her wheelchair suddenly move back. She aimed her rifle and shot Stag Beetle twice in the chest and once in the head. This caused him to fall to the ground and explode, leaving behind some Cell Medals.

The Rhinoceros Beetle Yummy had managed to push all the pseudo-yummies off of him after many tries, shaking off pseudo-yummies from the top of the dog pile in the process. The Rhinocerus Beetle got back on his feet and beat them into a submission.

E2 saw this and unfortunately knew that everyone else was too busy to deal with the large insect, so he was going to have to do something. He charged at Rhoncerus Beetle while he was dealing the Pseudo-yummies. Right as Rinocerus Beetle beat the last pseudo-yummy, Evan swung his crowbar at the insect's head, causing minor damage. Evan swung the crowbar at the insect's head as Rhinocerus Beetle turned around.

"I'm sorry," E2 said meekly right before Rhinocerus Beetle pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the side. This caused E2 to dematerialize.

After defeating the Grasshopper Yummy, Faebelle had decided to go help Finelope and her group of monsters. She didn't really care for the plus-sized mermaid but did so anyway because her abilities combined with covering fire from the spell rifle would lead to them getting out of this alive. She got over to that area just as the Rhinoceros Beetle Yummy had 'killed' E2.

Faebelle charged toward Rhinoceros Beetle, leapt into the air and punched him from behind, doing some spark damage. Rhinoceros Beetle tried to strike Faebelle with his arm as he turned to face her but she dodged the blow. She then delivered three quick punches to his midsection, targeting cracks in his armor that had been caused from Beatrice's barrage (though Faebelle didn't know that), hurting him greatly. Faebelle quickly moved to his left side and punched him in the head. She next jumped over Rhinoceros Beetle and leapt off his head. Faebelle then went into a steady rhythm of striking the large insect while nimbly avoiding his cumbersome attempts to counterattack. She kept this up for a while and finished him off with a punch to one of the cracks in his armor, causing him to fall to the ground and explode, producing some Cell Medals in the process.

"Damn I'm good," Faebelle said out loud, impressed with her current monster fighting record of two for two.

Lyra and Beatrice had been fighting Arms for a while, but didn't seem to be making any headway. Beatrice shot several stinger spikes at Arms, doing little damage. Arms turned her sword arm back to to its gatling gun form and shot Beatrice with a several second long barrage. Lyra attacked Arms from behind with her sickle but it did very little damage as Arms charged at Beatrice, and struck Beatrice in the head with her sword, sending Beatrice to the ground where she exploded while releasing many Cell Medals.

Lyra slashed at Arms' head but this had no effect aside from further angering the female Dopant. She tackled Lyra with her shoulder and then swung her sword to sweep Lyra's left leg out from under her, sending the musical Zodiart falling to the ground. Finelope had gone over to that area and hit Arms with a shot from her rifle that did a little spark damage. Arms ignored being shot from behind as she raised her sword over her head and struck Lyra, doing serious damage. Finelope hit Arms two more times as she performed another overhead swing that hit Lyra in the head, causing her to revert to her pseudo-yummy form as she died, and her Astro Switch appeared next her.

Finelope shot again as Arms faced her and unloaded some shots from her gatling gun. Fortunately, Finelope had thought ahead and had been shooting at him while facing sideways on her wheelchair. She rode backwards and evaded Arms' shots while hitting her two more times with the spell rifle.

Faebelle charged Arms from her blindspot, leapt into the air and punched Arms in the head, causing massive spark damage and sending the bulky red Dopant to the ground. Finelope shot Arms three more times. This made her revert to her human form as the Arms Gaia Memory flew out of her and shattered into oblivion. Finelope rolled over to Faebelle.

"Thanks for the help," the plus-sized mermaid said to the future dark fairy. "Though for the record, I could have finished that fight on my own."

"Sure," Faebelle said, not believing that but having more important things to do right now than argue the matter.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's notes: sorry for not focusing on Raven in the last chapter, that's just how it happened in my head. I'm going to fix that here.

….

 _This could be a problem_ , Raven thought as her axe strike did very little damage to Stonehart. Nocturnal moved to behind Stonehart before he regained his composure and struck the back of his knee, causing him to kneel to the ground. Nocturnal raised the Night Axe over her head and was going to strike but Stonehart dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way as the spell wore off. The Night Axe hit the ground and Stonehart shot two arrows from his Cosmic Switch powered crossbow that hit Nocturnal and caused spark damage. As Stonehart got back on his feet, Nocturnal switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and strummed it to send out of a bolt of lightning that hit Stonehart, causing moderate spark damage.

Stonehart got in close and swiped at Nocturnal but she sidestepped the blow, switched the Night Axe to axe mode and spun around to strike Stonehart's back. Nocturnal got in another blow as Stonehart turned around and slashed at Nocturnal's chest, causing moderate spark damage.

They began trading blows for a while. Nocturnal dodged some Stonehart's claw swipes and got in more blows with her axe, the blows Stonehart landed did more damage.

 _I can't beat this guy in a straight-up brawl_ , Raven thought. _I need to try something else._

Nocturnal switched the Night Axe to guitar and played a few chords that sent out yellowish-green sound waves that hit Stonehart and made him intensely dizzy. She then played a series of chords that made the guitar's axe blade glow purple with energy. She grabbed the Night Axe by its neck and swung at Stonehart's head but Stonehart was still able to determine what Nocturnal was trying to do and moved suddenly so that she struck his right shoulder instead, causing massive spark damage and dislocating it.

Stonehart cried out in pain before focusing on making Nocturnal hurt just as much and stabbed her twice with the claws on his left arm and then followed through with a swipe while his right arm dangled uselessly.

"Carlos!" Stonehart cried out to the hispanic man who had been standing by on his boss's orders. "Help me finish her off."

"Yes sir," Carlos said as he took out an Astro Switch and pressed it. He was covered by blackness as the constellation Musca appeared in front of him. The constellation went into the blackness as is was dispelled and Carlos had changed into a humanoid fly monster

He charged at Nocturnal and charged into a large mass of insects, swarming around her to attack. Each insect didn't do much damage but collectively it did add up. Nocturnal switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and began playing loud guitar music, hoping it drive the insects away. It worked and all the insects flew away from and recombined into the Musca Zodiart. Musca was still disoriented from the sonic onslaught so Nocturnal switched her weapon to axe mode and struck him from the side, causing him to stagger a few feet.

She was about to deliver another strike when Stonehart came from behind and hit her with a claw swipe from his good arm. Nocturnal turned around and got in an axe strike to his side. She moved to the lion creature's right side and struck him in the arm near his dislocated shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain again. Nocturnal was about to strike again but was stopped by Musca hitting her with a leaping kick to her side that sent her tumbling to the ground.

 _F# &k this_, Raven cursed mentally. _I can't take on fly guy and a down-but-not-out Stonehart_. Raven then remembered how in this particular battle, winning was not a requirement for victory and decided to try to run out the clock.

She conjured an infernal portal over ten feet to her side and Demona came out. Musca went to kick Nocturnal while she was down but heard Demona charge at him and leapt backwards to get away. Nocturnal got back on her feet, made the Night Axe vanish and got onboard her steed.

"Kill me if you can," Nocturnal taunted as she rode away from them and into the Dark Forest.

"Carlos, shoot for me," Stonehart said as he used his good arm to raise up his bad one and did his best to aim his crossbow at the fleeing Kamen Rider. Musca came over and pressed the trigger. Stonehart fired off three hits, trying his best to Demona with this awkward arrangement. Two missed, but one of his shots hit Demona in the ass.

"She won't get far with that injury," Stonehart said as he carefully lowered his bad arm and faced Musca. "You go kill her. I'll stay here and try to get my shoulder back into place."

"Yes sir," Musca said as he flared out insect wings from his back and flew after Nocturnal

…..

While everyone else was fighting, Evan had used his invisibility to go through the portal and enter Foundation X's base. He entered a large that was empty room except for the portal. He cast a spell on himself and could sense the energy that was powering the portal. He began following it back the machine that was generating the power.

After over five minutes of going through various corridors, he found what the large, box-like device he was looking for. He held up the belt loop containing all the Gaia Memories he had him and began channeling the power from five of them (the three he had used earlier, plus Aramatcolus and Jewel) into the Bomb Memory. When that was done, he activated the Memory he wanted.

Bomb

Yellowish beams of energy went into Evan's body and a yellowish ball of energy appeared in his right hand as his invisibility wore off. While this happened, all of his Gaia Memories shattered from being drained or overcharged.

"Shit," Evan said out loud as he tossed the explosive sphere and it landed next to the portal generator. While charging the sphere, Evan had commanded it to detonate on a time delay so he could have enough time to get out of the blast radius, which he began doing as fast as he could. About a minute later, a loud explosion went off and shook the complex.

Evan smirked with satisfaction at how he had completed the first objective of his trip behind enemy lines.

…

Nocturnal had fled on Demona for a few minutes before the infernal steed collapsed to the ground, the pain from her injury overcoming her. Nocturnal had gotten off before that happened and saw the bolt that had been embedded in Demona's backside.

"I'm so sorry," Nocturnal said, feeling immense guilt at how she had pushed Demona to get her away from battle in such a state. She pulled out the bolt and dismissed Demona away with another infernal portal. With that, she went over to a nearby tree, dispelled her armor and sat down against the tree. She began clutching one of the spots on her stomach where she had been hurt.

"What the hex was I thinking getting into this?" Raven asked herself. "I'm no warrior: I'm a fangirl who's in over her head."

"I take it you've had a rough day," a male voice said to Raven from her right side. The person the voice belonged to walked up to stand in front of Raven: he was an Asian man in his early to mid twenties with light brown hair. The thing that struck out most about him was that he had a small camera strapped over his neck. The camera had two lenses and was a unique shade of hot pink.

"That's putting it mildly," Raven said to the stranger. "I'm Raven Queen: who are you?"

"My name is Tsukasa Kodayo," he said, introducing himself. "And judging by that belt you're wearing, you are this world's Kamen Rider."

"What?" Raven asked with a quirked eyebrow, confused by how this man knew about Kamen Riders and his talk about 'this world'. She decided to ignore that for now and answer his question to the best of her abilities.

"I'm not a real Kamen Rider," Raven said as she sat up. "I gave myself Rider abilities to emulate them, but I don't think that makes me one. Case in point: I just ran away from my first real battle because it looked like I was about to get my but kicked thoroughly."

"The Riders I know of," Tsukasa began, "have had struggles with their battles and rarely got threw them without difficulty: there's no shame in almost losing and running when you were outmatched. And none of the ones I know chose to become Kamen Riders but that didn't stop them from rising to occasion and overcoming adversity."

"You're right," Raven said with a slight gasp of realization. Of the riders she knew about, several got them from being experimented on against their will and a few more got them simply from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They didn't start out as great warriors: they got to the point after many battles (some of which, they didn't win) and eventually obtained greatness.

"Thank you so much," Raven said as she held out her and and Tsukasa shook it. "I have a fight to finish. But my ride's in no condition to get me there."

"I can help with that," Tsukasa said as he tilted his head to his left. Raven looked at the direction he indicated and spotted an unusual looking motorcycle.

 _Where the hex did this guy get a motorcycle?_ Raven thought. After thinking about that and how Asian people were uncommon in Book End, she came to the obvious conclusion.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Raven asked.

"That's putting it mildly," Tsukasa said with a smile from using Raven's words from earlier. He was going to explain earlier but was interrupted by hearing something that sounded like a giant mosquito. Both of them turned towards it and saw the Musca Zodiart come towards them. He landed and reverted back to his human form, holding his Astro Switch.

"Finally caught up to you," Carlos said with a smirk as he took out another Astro Switch from his pocket. He pressed the button on this specially designed Switch and then threw it. The Switch vanished and produced six Dustards. Carlos then turned back into Musca and at this point finally noticed that Raven was not alone. "Who the hell are you?" he said to Tsukasa.

"I'm just a passing through Kamen Rider," he said as he took a belt buckle-like object from his jacket and put it on the front of his waist. The buckle produced a belt around Tsukasa, as well as a large square object with a handle on his left hip. "Remember that," he said as he took a card from the inside of the square object. "Henshin!"

Tsukasa pulled back on the side of the buckle, causing the central part to rotate 90 degrees and he placed the card in a slot at the top before resetting the buckle to its original position.

 **Kamen Ride: Decade**

Nine translucent circles appeared next to him in a circle pattern, then changed into humanoid shapes and converged on Tsukasa like a picture coming into focus. Tsukasa was in black and white armor and some lines slid into place on his head and the armor gained color. His armor was black in the center and forearms and the same shade of hot pink as his camera on the sides and shoulders. There was an odd 'X' shape outlined in white on the left of side of his chest that had a diagonal line that went from his left shoulder to his right side. His helmet had green 'bug eyes' and black vertical lines over it.

"Get him," Musca ordered the dustards. As they charged, Decade took a card from his belt.

"Henshin," he cried as he inserted the card.

 **Kamen Ride: Faiz**

A red vertical line and a circle appeared on Decade's chest. There was a flash and Decade had transformed into another rider: Kamen Rider Faiz. This rider armor had a silver chest plate over a black bodysuit with the same red lines as before over the arms and legs and gold 'bug eyes' that took up nearly all of the helmet.

 _Now I'm thoroughly confused_ , Raven thought as she saw this. She had never heard of Decade before and was very surprised to see him henshin again into a rider that she was familiar with.

Decade/Faiz took the square object off of his belt and pulled the handle so it lined up diagonally with the square. A square rod ending in a blade popped out. Decade/Faiz swung the sword at a charging Dustard while evading another's blow. He struck that Dustard and another that came from his side. He was then struck from behind by two Dustards and two others slashed him from the front. He took out a card and put in his belt.

 **Attack Ride: Autovajin**

Decade's motorcycle transformed into a robotic humanoid with one wheel on the back and the other wheel over its left arm. It hovered several feet off the ground and started shooting from the gun on its front wheel, blasting one of the Dustards into stardust. Two others faced the Autovajin and threw shuriken at the robot, only slighlty damaging it. The Autovajin returned fire and blasted another Dustard into oblivion.

"Henshin," Raven cried out after finding her composure and once again becoming Kamen Rider Nocturnal. She summoned the Night Axe and struck the other Dustard that attacked Autovajin from behind in the head, destroying it.

Decade/Faiz destroyed the one Dustard he was fighting and was then struck by a flying kick from Musca. He staggered back and hit a tree, the collision causing him to pixelate like a low quality photograph and change back to his original armor. This also caused the effect of the Autovajin to wear off and change his motorcycle back to its original form.

"Henshin," Decade cried out as he put another card into his belt.

 **Kamen Ride: Kabuto**

Energy hexagons came from the belt and covered Decade, changing him into a black bodysuit with a red metal chest-plate, blue 'bug eyes' and a red horn on his helmet that looked like the one a Rhinoceros beetle has. He placed another card into his belt.

 **Attack Ride: Clock Up**

Decade/Kabuto ran at super speed towards Musca, streaking past the fly monster while delivering a sword slash. He did this again and was about to a third time when Musca split into an insect swarm. Decade/Kabuto's sword passed through the swarm and he streaked past. The swarm converged on Decade/Kabuto and began striking. Decade/Kabuto tried using his super speed to swat the insects with his sword but after about three seconds of being swarmed, he pixelated back to Decade. Fortunately, his attempt at super speed swatting caused Musca to merge back to his humanoid form.

Nocturnal had been fighting the remaining Dustard for a while and finally vanquished it. Nocturnal came from behind on Musca and struck him from behind with the Night Axe. He then flew up as Decade went to slash him so that Decade ended up hitting Nocturnal. Musca then kicked Decade in the shoulder then dropped down, did a double leg kick off of Nocturnal that sent him away from the riders, rolled on the ground before standing up.

Decade grabbed the handle of his sword and adjusted to be at a lower angle to the square. A trigger dropped to the top of the handle as the sword receded back into the square and a short barrel popped out of one of the corners. Decade squeezed off three shots at Musca, each shot hitting and doing spark damage. Nocturnal quickly switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and struck a power chord, sending out a bolt of lightning that hit Musca, doing significant spark damage and sending him to the ground. Nocturnal then switched the Night Axe back to axe mode and charged Musca, intending to hit Musca while he was down but Musca deployed his wings to fly upwards and away from Nocturnal. He landed on his feet and then leapt towards Nocturnal, kicking her in the chest.

Decade turned his square back to its sword mode, ran up to Musca and slashed him in the shoulder. Musca countered by kicking Decade in the sides twice and followed through with a roundhouse kick that Decade staggering several feet to the side.

Nocturnal came at him from behind with her axe raised but Musca heard her coming and flew to avoid the strike. Nocturnal quickly turned the Night Axe to guitar mode and struck a few chords, sending out brown sound waves that multiplied Musca's weight by three. Musca dropped to the sky because his wings weren't able to support his new weight. He instinctively prepared to land as normal without properly bracing himself. His knees made a loud, cracking sound from breaking as he landed. He fell forward as he screamed in pain and reverted back to his human form, his Astro Switch appearing next to him.

 _Shit_ , Raven thought as Carlos's scream registered with her. _That is going to haunt me for a while._

She went over to Carlos's Astro Switch and picked it up. Remembering how Gentaro Kisaragi, AKA Kamen Rider Fourze, dealt with Astro Switches from defeated Zodiarts, she pressed the red button. Since she was transformed, this cancelled out the Switch's intended effect and caused it to vanish.

"I don't know exactly what you did, but nice work," Decade said to Nocturnal.

"Thanks, I think," Nocturnal responded and then looked at Carlos. "We need to take him with him us."

"Okay," Decade said. The two Riders got on Decade's motorcycle with Nocturnal carrying Carlos over her shoulders and rode back to where the fight had began.

…...

Author's Notes: for those of you who aren't Kamen Rider fans, Tsukasa was the star his own Kamen Rider show back in 2009. He traveled between dimensions and crossed over with alternate versions of other Rider shows and help out the Riders. This plays out kind of like an episode of his show from the perspective of the rider he helps. I wanted Raven to be helped by a cannon Kamen Rider and I choose Tsukasa because his status as a wanderer makes it easy for him to pop in and out like I want.

For those of you are Kamen Rider fans and are wondering how this fits into the continuity of Tsukasa's show, I have no idea so don't ask.


	8. Chapter 8

Back in the Foundation X facility, Evan had my his way to a laboratory and found a computer terminal there. He took out his mirror pad from a slit in his cloak and turned it on. He found what he was looking for on the pad: two viruses made from EA High's resident egg head, Humphrey Dumpty. Normally Humphrey wouldn't help him but using his magic to create an illusion of Evan's idea of Apple White looked like naked had been very persuasive.

The viruses had different purposes: one to destroy and one to gather. Evan used his magic to make a small mass of red energy come out of his mirror pad. This contained one of the viruses and he sent it into the computer, hoping his magic would counter any technological incompatibilities. It did, and the virus began finding and destroying any information relating to Foundation X's research into extra-dimensional travel. With the prototype portal machine destroyed, they would have to start over from scratch.

While the 'destroy' virus did it's work, Evan pulled up a mass of blue energy that contained the 'gather' virus and sent it into the computer. This virus began gathering all information this cell had on the creation of Gaia Memories and Astro Switches. Once that was done, Evan would transfer the information to a portable hard drive he had with him.

While he was waiting on the viruses, he heard footsteps approach him from behind. He turned around a saw a muscular Asian man wearing the signature Foundation X lab coat/business suit combo.

"You don't look like a scientist," Evan said.

"They keep me around for grunt work," the man said. "Like taking out the trash." The man pulled out a grey Gaia Memory and activated it.

Violence

The man injected the Memory into the right side of his neck and changed into an even more muscular grey humanoid whose left hand ended in an iron ball.

Evan was not concerned with this as he reached into a pocket in his cloak, withdrew several Cell Medals and threw them in the air towards Violence. The Medals turned into eight pseudo-yummies that fell on top of violence, pinning him to the ground. He tried to shake himself free, but this had no effect. He tried again and was able to make a pseudo-yummy fall off the top of the pile.

"Shit," Evan said as he began looking through the lab for anything that might help him. "Something good, something good, something….. ow, I've wanted one of these," Evan said as he picked up a blue, gun-like contraption used to create the injector ports that allowed people with Gaia Memories to become Dopants. He put it inside a special pouch in his cloak that was enchanted so the inside was many times larger than the outside.

Evan continued looking while Violence shook more pseudo-yummies off of himself. Evan picked up an Astro Switch from a work table shortly before Violence freed himself and began kicking the pseudo-yummies while they were still on the floor.

 _I've never tried this before, but I don't have a choice,_ Evan thought as he decided to do an experiment with the Astro Switch. He channeled some of his magic into the switch, then threw it forward and telekinetically pressed the red button. The Switch did as Evan intended, vanishing and producing six Dustards. Evan didn't time to enjoy the success of his experiment as Violence glared at him.

"Surround him and strike from all sides," Evan ordered his Dustards while grinning. "And try to cut the legs out from under him."

The Dustards went to fight Violence, trying to surround him. Violence shot out his iron ball from a chain in his arm. The ball hit a Dustard, sending him back a few feet before he dematerialized and the ball went back to Violence. Two Dustards came at Violence from his sides and slashed at his knees while another another two slashed at him from behind, knocking him off-balance and sending him to the floor. Violence fired his chain ball against the floor, him up and crashing into the two Dustards behind him, knocking them down.

He tried to swipe at one Dustard but the ninja-like minion back stepped to avoid the blow. The Dustard slashed at Violence along with another one, the attacks having no visible effect. Violence grabbed a Dustard's arm and threw it into the other one, sending them both to the floor before dematerializing.

The remaining Dustards did their best to slash at Violence while avoiding his strikes, but it was no use: he vanquished them one by one while their attacks only served to annoy him.

"And now to kill you, tresspasser," Violence yelled at Evan after having finished off the last Dustard.

"I don't think so," Evan said with a cocky smirk as he held up a red Gaia Memory that he had just grabbed and activated it.

 **Heat**

Lines of red energy went into Evan's body as he held up his right hand and a massive fireball formed in front of it. He launched the fireball at Violence, causing a large explosion and sending Violence flying back as he returned to his human form, his Gaia Memory appearing next to him and shattering. The foundation X grunt got from this and glared daggers at Evan.

"Shit," Evan said as he saw the grunt get up. He had a plan in mind to deal with this. He teleported his crowbar into his hand. I hope E2 doesn't need this.

The grunt charged him. Evan remained calm and teleported behind him when they were close. Evan then swung the crowbar at the grunt's head, causing a large gash to appear as he dropped to the floor. Evan looked at the grunt to see if he'd be getting up.

"Oh shit, you're dead," Evan said in regret. "Damn it! I was really hoping the first time I killed someone would be more grandiose than this and I just blew it on the fricking janitor." Evan then kicked the corpse in its side. "That's for making me kill you, you son of a bitch."

Evan then looked at the computer he uploaded the viruses into earlier and remembered that this trip could also have its upsides. He went over to the computer and saw that the 'gather' virus had completed its assigned task. He took out a portable hard drive from his cloak, extracted the virus from the computer and put it into the hard drive. He smiled evilly at the prospect of what he was going to learn from this.

…

Back with the monster forces, Mason was squaring off against Whale while Olivia was fighting Ice Age. Whale struck Mason with his tail-staff, doing some damage but not enough to stop Mason from stabbing him stabbing with a chisel. Mason followed through with another stab and Whale unleashed a stream of water from his mouth. The torrent only disrupted Mason's momentum but Whale took this opportunity to strike Mason's knee from the side, causing the Chisel Zodiart to fall to the ground. Before Whale could strike again, Mason turned to face him while still on the ground and threw a chisel at Whale's tail-staff, knocking the weapon from it's owner's hands.

Whale decided not to retrieve his weapon and went to kick Mason on the Zodiart's right side, away from the remaining chisel in his left hand. He kicked Mason twice before being hit from the side by a thrust of Meiling's quado, having finished off the Mantis yummy. It didn't do much damage but while he was looking to see where the attack came from, Meiling did a swipe. Whale was about to attack but was taken by surprise from a series of quick knife slashes on his back from Cerise. Meiling dropped her quado, drew her sword and began slashing the sea mammal Zodiart.

While the two girls had Whale occupied, Mason got back on his feet and picked up Whale's tail-staff. He struck Whale with a thrust and then delivered a swipe while the girls kept slashing at Whale with their blades. Mason brought the tail-staff over his head and hit Whale in his, sending the Zodiart to the ground as he reverted back to his human form and his Astro Switch appeared next to him. The tail-staff dematerialized in Mason's hand and he grabbed the Astro Switch off the ground.

While this was going on, Ice Age was skating around Olivia, doing some damage with hit and run attacks with bursts of cold while staying out of the Ostrich Yummy's kicking range. Ice Age was about to make another run at Olivia when he was hit from behind by a blast from Finelope's spell rifle. He was hit again as Olivia ran towards him. The Ostrich Yummy went in and delivered a series of rapid, fire-footed kicks that was finished by a blazing roundhouse that sent Ice Age flying back. The cryokinetic Dopant never hit the ground as Faebelle got behind him and delivered several punches while Finelope got in another two shots.

Olivia jumped into the air with her right foot surrounded by flame and delivered an axe kick directly to Ice Age's head. This caused Ice Age to fall backwards as he reverted to his human form and his Gaia Memory appeared next to him and shattered.

….

Since Nocturnal fled and Carlos gave chase, Stonehart forced his shoulder back into joint. Unfortunately, he greatly overestimated how much his mutamid form would dull the pain from such an internal injury. He cried out in pain for a few seconds and then just stood there as he went into shock. He remained that way for quite some time as the tissues in his shoulder reattached, his mutamid physiology doing what he expected this time. Some time later, the shock wore off and he experimented with moving his arm around. Aside from some mild discomfort, it worked just as well as before the injury.

Stonehart looked around and saw that his forces had taken losses. He was strongly considering helping his remaining forces when he saw a motorcycle heading towards him. His curiosity peaked, he decided to stay where he was and wait for the motorcycle to come to him. When it did, he saw that it was being driven by a Kamen Rider he did not recognize and Nocturnal in the back, carrying Carlos. They drove up to him and got off.

"What did you do to Carlos?" Stonehart asked in surprise as Nocturnal laid him down by the side of Decade's motorcycle.

"I kind of broke his kneecaps," Nocturnal said awkwardly.

"You bitch!" Stonehart yelled as he charged the two riders.


	9. Chapter 9

Stonehart swiped at Nocturnal and did some spark damage as Decade struck him from behind with his sword, doing very little damage. Stonehart turned around and slapped Decade to the ground. Nocturnal took her Night Axe and struck the side Stonehart's right knee from behind. She then swung the Night Axe at his head, sending him to the ground. She was going to deliver an overhead strike at her downed adversary but Stonehart aimed his crossbow and let out two bolts, stopping her in her tracks.

Decade came from behind and struck Stonehart while he was getting up and the lion mutamid countered with two claw strikes. Nocturnal came from behind and struck with the Night Axe the stepped back to avoid Stonehart's backhanded strike. She swung the Night Axe at the same shoulder she dislocated earlier, causing significant pain to Stonehart. He swiped at her and missed as she got in another axe strike but then he hit her with his claws.

Decade saw this as he took out a card from his square. "Henshin," he said as he put the card into his buckle.

 **Kamen Ride: Hibiki**

Decade was engulfed in purple fire as he changed into another rider, Hibiki. This one had a purple body, red gloves, metal strap things that formed an X on his chest. The face was black, blank space with six red lines coming from the side and two small horns on top. Decade/Hibiki took another card from his square and put it in his buckle.

 **Attack Ride: Ongekibou Rekka**

Decade/Hibiki picked up two small, red sticks from his belt that had materialized when he changed into Hibiki. These were meant to be drumsticks used with a Japanese taiko drum but they also made good billy clubs. The effect of the card kicked in and engulfed the round ends of both sticks in fire. Decade/Hibiki swung the sticks at Stonehart, sending out several fireballs at the lion creature. The fireballs hit Stonehart while he was fighting Nocturnal, each one doing pretty good damage.

Nocturnal took advantage of his surprise to work in two axe strikes then switched the Night Axe to guitar mode and played a power chord while the tip was up against Stonehart, delivering a point-blank lightning bolt that sent him a few feet of the ground and flying back then rolling back when he landed.

"Let's finish this," Nocturnal said, then played her guitar for a few seconds which caused a glowing purple symbol of a woman's boot to appear in front of her.

Decade pixelated back to his original form and somehow knew what Nocturnal had in mind. He took a card from his square and entered into his buckle.

 **Final Attack Ride: De-de-de Decade**

Ten large energy cards appeared in between Decade and Stonehart as the lion mutamid got back on his feet. Decade leapt into the air, the cards levitating with him, as Nocturnal stepped on the woman's boot symbol and also leapt into the air. Nocturnal headed towards Stonehart with her right foot outstretched and surrounded by purple energy as Decade took the same position and 'skipped' through the cards (disappearing between two cards, traveling between the next two and so on) with his foot surrounded by gold energy and yellow lines.

Both Kamen Riders collided with Stonehart, their kicks sending him skidding back over ten feet as sparks came from his body. When he stopped, he fell forward and exploded.

 _I wish it hadn't come to this_ , Raven thought, glad that she had survived but not feeling so glad about having killed someone. She consoled herself with the fact that Stonehart had evil intentions for both this world and the one he came from, to say nothing of how he tried to tried to kill Raven first so he could have the honor of killing a Kamen Rider. She turned towards Decade.

"I couldn't have done this without you," Nocturnal said with almost tangible gratitude.

"No problem: helping other riders is what I do," Decade said.

"Raven," Cerise said to get her attention as she, Meiling, Faebelle, Finelope, Mason and Olivia approached the two riders. Decade raised his sword as the Yummy and Zodiart drew near but Nocturnal pushed his arm down.

"Don't worry: those monsters are with me," she said. "Actually, they're with this guy I know. It's complicated."

"Speaking of complicated," Faebelle interjected, "who's your friend in the pink armor?"

"My name is Tsukasa," he said as his armor blurred like an out of focus photograph and quickly vanished. "It was nice fighting alongside you Raven, but I have to go now."

"I understand," Raven said as she dispelled her armor in a flash of black light. "It was great meeting an actual... no, another rider," she said as she held her hand out and Tsukasa shook it.

Tsukasa took several steps back and then took a picture of the group of fairy-teens and monsters with the camera he wore around his neck. He then turned around and walked into a large screen that appeared to be some kind of distortion in space, vanishing into it before it did as well.

Evan exited the portal from the Foundation X facility and saw Tsukasa vanish into the screen. "Don't know, don't care," he said as he walked towards his allies and monsters. "Judging by how you're all here and there's no fighting going on, I take it we won."

Olivia gave some honking sounds in response that Evan was able to understand thanks to a spell he had once cast.

"What do you mean you two are my only surviving monsters?" Evan asked in disbelief even though he knew the answer to that question. Olivia honked some more as she held up two Astro Switches in her hands and Mason held up one he was carrying. These switches originally belonged to Lyra and the Foundation X Zodiarts. Mason and Olivia had grabbed them because Lyra didn't need her's anymore and they claimed the two from Foundation X as spoils of victory.

 _Let's see_ , Evan thought as he began to do some calculating. _I've lost all my favorite Gaia Memories and most of my monsters, but I have gained three Astro Switches, the Heat and Triceratops Gaia Memories I took from their lab, one of the connector port things, a bunch of cell medals and the possibility of learning to make my own Switches and Memories. Not even taking into account how I don't have to worry about retribution from Foundation X, this went very well for me_.

...

Raven, Evan and everyone else started rounding up all the remaining members of Foundation X, which included handing over a very pissed off Carlos over to one of them. He was in the middle of unloading a rage-fueled tirade at Raven when Faebelle interrupted him by hexing his mouth shut. The Foundation X remnants were then sent through the portal, back to their own dimension.

"This way, everybody," Evan said as he guided them over. "You don't have to go home, but you sure as hex can't stay here." Evan then kicked the last person in line in the ass to force them through the portal. He then stepped back and fired a green beam of energy at the portal. After several seconds, the portal collapsed in on itself and closed in a very loud boom.

"Yes!" Evan cheered with his arms raised up in spellebration of how his plan to cover his ass had worked. He was also hexstatic that he closed the portal before they found out about him destroying their prototype portal machine, deleting their research on it and killing their janitor. He then turned towards his allies. "Thank you so much for your help in this matter."

"Any chance," Finelope started, "that you're grateful enough to express it by treating us to pizza at Antonio's?"

"With how you and Cerise eat? I'm not made of money, you know," Evan said in a very panicked tone.

"You'll just pay for Finelope and I to have one large pizza each," Cerise said, understanding why he'd be scared about paying to feed both of them. "The rest of you will probably just need to split one."

"That sounds good," Evan agreed, hoping to get them to accept this before they tried to get more out of him.

...

With the battle over, Evan went to deposit Olivia, Mason and his spoils at his hideout while the girls went back to their dorms to shower and change. With that out of the way, everyone met up at Antonio's, Book End's favorite pizza place.

Evan paid for four pizzas: two larges for Cerise and Finelope and two larges for everyone else to share.

Raven grabbed a slice and leisurely enjoyed it. She was very proud of herself for surviving her first major battle despite a major factor in that being the unplanned and unsolicited assistance from Tsukasa. After fighting alongside another rider and hearing his words of encouragement, she felt ready for anything. She then looked at Evan and knew that 'anything' would probably come from him.

 _He's a psychopath with access to resources from Foundation X and is most likely planning something_ , Raven thought. _And saving his ass from the crisis he started is not going to earn me any mercy if I get in his way._

She then looked at Faebelle and knew that this brief period of cooperation would do nothing about their family feud, which Raven couldn't care less about but seemed to mean the world to her. She's probably going to help him again.

Raven wasn't too worried about this as she looked around at Cerise, Finelope and Meiling. She so happy to have made some new friends during this whole mess, especially since Cerise had two more people she could trust with her mixed heritage.

With her skills, abilities and friends to lean on, she knew she could handle whatever the future threw at her.


End file.
